Sometime Around Midnight
by empty gun
Summary: Uryuu remembers all of his father's moments of emotional disarray, for what few there are.


When Uryuu was a child, he went through phases in his choice of reading material. First it was books of space, then books of history on Europe, because it wasn't something they taught in school. When he was too young to really find it fascinating, he picked up a book of child psychology from his father's library. It was very boring, but there was a paragraph in the middle of a chapter on discipline that said something about a common punishment most parents employ without thought is the temporary withholding of love from a child. Uryuu remembered he'd stopped reading, and looked up from the book, staring hard at the opposite wall from his desk. Somewhere his father was in the house. Uryuu wondered for years, when his father ignored him, for what he was being punished.

Uryuu knows it wasn't always quiet, this relationship between father and son. He knows because there are pictures of Ryuuken almost in another life, long long ago, and he's smiling, though reserved. It's still a smile. And he remembers, being so much smaller and the embrace of his father. There are also pictures of a woman his father doesn't talk about who is Uryuu's mother. The last time Ryuuken mentioned her, it was a year ago. Uryuu doesn't broach the subject, just lets it slides tenderly out of their sphere of conversation.

He doesn't mention Ryuuken's own estranged father, for separate reasons. It tends to make the mood turn sour and awkward. His father's expression changes in a way Uryuu doesn't believe he can wear regarding his own father, but Uryuu makes the same face for the same reason. After an argument with his father once, he sees his own face reflected in a dark kitchen window and sees his own father staring back at him. For a second, all bitterness and disregard for feeling. This is the only thing of Ryuuken's he owns, he thinks, wanting to break the glass in the panes. Just his looks. He hopes he's like his mother. He wouldn't know; he didn't remember her.

That was the last thing his father said, one year ago, about this mother. "You're just like her," he said, blowing smoke through an open window in the living room, the weather outside too cold to stand in for a cigarette. The chilly air swirls into the house and his father looks back at the dark sky. Uryuu remembers it acutely, not only for this small tidbit of information he feels almost grateful to have received. He remembers it for the look on his father's face; he looks defeated and doesn't wear that expression often.

He can remember all his father's atypical expressions, breaches of character. Almost as though he's clinging to these moments where his father is not himself - he's someone else entirely for a moment. Uryuu remembers Ryuuken doesn't startle easy, but he can see Ryuuken's startled face as clearly as it happened only moments before, even though, to this day, it's been twelve years. He can only remember the rest of the memory in hazy fog, as though the living room was made less of matter than pure emotion, as he moved through it. The outside world was pure white. Uryuu doesn't remember the spirit he saw, but this was the first time he realized that something was amiss.

Until that day, maybe he took for granted that ghosts were people. He'd never had to question it. None of them had ever set foot inside their house, of course, but there was someone out front who wasn't real, he knew that and didn't know how he knew. He simply stood, mouth a perfect circle of surprise, looking at the woman who smiled back at him.

He'd collided with his father inside, running through the house after slamming the door and clung to Ryuuken's slacks. His father didn't notice or take note of his trembling.

"Uryuu," he said, trying to pry his son from clothes. He paused. Uryuu was gripping tightly enough to trip him. "Uryuu, don't run inside the house. Did you get the mail?"

Uryuu bit his lip and said nothing.

"Son, you look like you've seen a ghost." Ryuuken paused again and looked not frightened, but surprised. "Oh, I suppose you have then."

He reached down and gently pried his son's fingers from his clothes.

"Uryuu, listen to me. Look at me." Uryuu looked up at his father, who looked less serious than his words, all things considered. "They're real, but they can't hurt you. You need not worry about them, because you'll see them a lot more."

Uryuu could remember those last words keenly, even the inflection in his father's voice. The surprised tone was gone and replaced with something resigned. _Because you'll see them a lot more_. There was nothing comforting in his honesty, but Uryuu became used to this comprehension of the situation. He could see the dead, speak with them if he was so inclined, but mostly he ignored them as he would a stranger in the street. There was no reason to pretend otherwise.

He didn't realize, until the day he saw one six months later, a few days after his fourth birthday, why he didn't see Hollows before, or hear them. Perhaps he did and didn't remember, as the human mind has a habit of acceptance of certain events and the rejection and replacement of others. He'd also read in the child psychology book how … pliable the minds of the young were. Impressionable. He might have been told it was nothing and out of fear, believed the monsters weren't real.

At age four, Uryuu would question his own existence without any knowledge of his inquiring, in the way only small children can solve existential crises. _I am myself and no one else. The thing I imagine aren't real, but I am real. _He accepts the facts with the hard reasoning and logic, as much as he is capable of.

The first time he hears a hollow, the leaves have turned red and golden and purple. They litter the wet asphalt at the park and the sky is almost the same color, grey and cold. Uryuu swings by himself, his raincoat yellow against the grey world. On the ground there are occasional spots of color, but mostly the leaves have dried up, brown and dead. He stopped swinging immediately when a loud roar echoes through the air. The sound is primitive and terrifying. Uryuu thinks he can feel it in his throat. His father is already walking towards him, grabs his hand.

"We're going home," he says simply. "It's going to rain soon anyway." He doesn't speak over the sound of the next roar. It sounds farther away, but he addresses the issue clearly and directly. Instead of walking him home, he picks him up, one of the last times his father will ever hold him and begins to walk briskly along the wet streets. Droplets of rain begin to dot his coat, but they didn't bring umbrellas, and Ryuuken says, "Uryuu, some kinds of ghosts will hurt you and you'll know those when you see them."

Uryuu doesn't remember ever being so terrified in his life, but Ryuuken continues, grimly. "The shinigami will take care of hollows and you don't worry about them. Your grandfather can take care of hollows. It's not something you need to bother yourself with."

His clinical manner of assurance is never welcome, but Uryuu doesn't feel the need to ask questions. For once, he just trusts his father's word. And he will, he knows, until he can speak with his grandfather. In the span of what feels like thirty seconds, his fear turns to curiosity. Uryuu doesn't know the word Quincy, but he knows in that instance, there is a difference between himself and the people who pass them on the street in the beginning rain. The children at the playground. Father and grandfather and Uryuu are different.

_I'm myself_, thinks Uryuu, _I'm me, I'm me, and I'm not like them._

It isn't an isolating feeling, but an exciting one. Uryuu feels important, and after speaking with his grandfather the next day while Ryuuken is taking a late shift, he feels important and excited again. He doesn't loop into his questions "why us? Why me?" because questions like that are useless. Uryuu is proud to be a Quincy, being something special and interesting.

Father doesn't feel the same way and the only time Uryuu can ever remember him doing anything akin to rage is when Uryuu makes the mistake of bringing up the Quincy. At the time it doesn't register, but his father looks startled and closer to scared, for a split second. The next moment his mouth is a line, his eyes narrowed to slits.

"You stay away from him," says Ryuuken, and Uryuu doesn't notice, but his hands are shaking. "My son will not be …" He closes his eyes and breathes in and Uryuu can see his mouth moving, silently counting to ten. "I told you not to concern yourself with any of it! You don't listen, do you?"

"Father," says Uryuu, not surprised in the least at the reaction. "Grandfather said it wasn't anything I shouldn't know -"

"He would say that," Ryuuken replies, with that bitter expression etched into his face. "If there is one thing for you to ever listen to me say, it would be not to concern yourself with this."

Uryuu just can't listen, and he won't open his mouth to explain, because it's futile. Ryuuken walks away from the dinner table and all Uryuu can think is how selfish his father is and how understands nothing. _He doesn't try. _

The look of futility returns when Uryuu is a bit older and his grandfather is killed by a hollow. The look is not present when he first discovers Uryuu is safe, but that night Ryuuken paces the length of the house bare-foot, which is strange. He walks from the kitchen to the front door, turns around and walks back, deep in thought. Uryuu can see him from the top of the stairs, and is witnessing something he's sure he shouldn't see. Is this grief? Or anger? It's midnight and his father isn't asleep, despite having been awake at least twenty-four hours. Uryuu has been awake nearly that long when he hears his father finally go to bed. The door to his own room opens, a sliver of light falling across the wall he's facing, while he's pretending to be asleep.

Is Ryuuken ever scared or confused? Uryuu realizes early on, before the Quincy, before his grandfather's death that he doesn't understand this man. And his father, in turn, doesn't understand him. If he did, he'd allow Uryuu to do what he felt was important. It was such a stupid reason to despise the Quincy, after all. In fact, Uryuu thinks, one can be a doctor _and _a Quincy. So why bother with such hatred? There wasn't anything more to it, because Uryuu believes his father, for all his intelligence, is a simple man, with single-minded goals. Raise a successful son from a distance and make him work for your respect and love, which he'll never receive. Ryuuken simply doesn't like him, Uryuu believes. His father thinks he's weak, stupid, proud, and at times Uryuu wonders if he wishes he wasn't "like his mother" , and more like Ryuuken, able to turn off his emotions with just thought. His father can do this, if his father felt anything at all.

_He doesn't._

Uryuu is completely wrong.


End file.
